ABSTRACT
Labor is the source of public wealth; from labor springs income, and this annual increase is not in any way limited to the share that goes to the owners of land, or capital, as rent and as interest. Every annual increase in national wealth, every addition that is consumable without reproduction ought to be therefore taxable; it may be spent entirely, and all spending ought to contribute in a certain measure to a guarantee of all benefits. The net income of land is, of all incomes, the one that has the least need to spring from the actions and will of its owner; it is also the one which governments have felt least obliged to treat with circumspection. The balanced appraisal of taxation, however tentative, is very realistic, but it certainly does not offer any cut-and-dried answers to idealists and reformers of human society.
